HOUSTON  Beyond the security gate at the Johnson Space Centers 1960s-era campus here, inside a two-story glass and concrete building with winding corridors, there is a floating laboratory.

Harold G. White, a physicist and advanced propulsion engineer at NASA, beckoned toward a table full of equipment there on a recent afternoon: a laser, a camera, some small mirrors, a ring made of ceramic capacitors and a few other objects.

He and other NASA engineers have been designing and redesigning these instruments, with the goal of using them to slightly warp the trajectory of a photon, changing the distance it travels in a certain area, and then observing the change with a device called an interferometer. So sensitive is their measuring equipment that it was picking up myriad earthly vibrations, including people walking nearby. So they recently moved into this lab, which floats atop a system of underground pneumatic piers, freeing it from seismic disturbances.

” Space is big. Really big. You just wont believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think its a long way down the road to the chemists, but thats just peanuts to space. “ - H2G2

3
posted on 11/29/2013 8:07:16 PM PST
by ctdonath2
(Making good people helpless doesn't make bad people harmless.)

Yep, I say just go do it. Maybe offer a prize for the first manmade vehicle to exceed 1/10 the speed of light! If mass increases with velocity, then those propellants ejected will have more impulse as well, or so it seems to me.

Didn’t the French do this exact same thing seven or eight years ago to show that paired photons remain quantum-bound even if they travel different distances? They produce the same interference pattern as paired photons which arrive at the same time.

Why would we be spending all this money to show the French were right?

22
posted on 11/29/2013 9:10:37 PM PST
by VanShuyten
("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")

NASA’s budget had been cut to the bone, then Sequestration cut it even further. We do not pursue greatness through research or space exploration any longer. Americans worship at the altar of Medicaid, Food Stamps, Social Security Disability, Medicare, ObamaCare, EITC cash refunds, Section 8 housing vouchers, TANF Welfare, and Unemployment checks.

“Perhaps, but such research is worthwhile if it could translate to the proliferation of our species across the galaxy.”

Humans as we know them will never live unprotected on another world. We developed and live in a soup of microorganisms. Our defenses were evolved to allow us to survive in THAT soup. Add one new organism to that soup and our defenses will not recognize it in time to stop it from giving us terminal Vegan Foot Rot.

From the Internet: The Bussard ramjet is a theoretical method of spacecraft propulsion proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard, popularized by Poul Anderson's novel Tau Zero, Larry Niven in his Known Space series of books, Vernor Vinge in his Zones of Thought series, and referred to by Carl Sagan in the television series and book Cosmos. Bussard proposed a ramjet variant of a fusion rocket capable of reasonable interstellar spaceflight, using enormous electromagnetic fields (ranging from kilometers to many thousands of kilometers in diameter) as a ram scoop to collect and compress hydrogen from the interstellar medium. High speeds force the reactive mass into a progressively constricted magnetic field, compressing it until thermonuclear fusion occurs. The magnetic field then directs the energy as rocket exhaust opposite to the intended direction of travel, thereby accelerating the vessel.

Hmmm, all moot for us folks today, but MOST interesting to read about. Thanks for posting.

If we had fusion power, we would soon have a drag strip for test vehicles that would be several light years long and a half light year across. Then maybe we could do the measurement that these scientists are attempting. You need a big space lab to do these things.

But who is holding their breath, with the rastas crowd controlling the White Hut of the United States of Zimbabwe?
They be too busy pimping their superior equality to bother.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.